Autobiography Pt. 3: English as a Second Language

I recently have been asked by a few people about how I became interested in antiracism.  In helping myself move forward, I realize that I need to look back.  Also, I hope to convey the sense that I too am on a journey; I am a work in progress.  This is part of my story. 

Eight o’clock in the morning is early on a Saturday and even more so if you are a college student.  And if on top of that, you are getting ready for a day of yard work, it can seem daunting.  I know from experience.  I had dragged myself out of bed on many a Saturday morning to go on volunteer work days over the years.  Now an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher, I was making sure my students from mainland China spent a morning raking leaves and cleaning gutters. 

I came onto the ESL scene at a time when “service-learning” was all the rage in higher education.  It was working its way down to K-12, and had only made a dent in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages).  However, I had taken an elective in my master’s degree courses that required me to design a course syllabus.  One of the options was to design a service-learning course, and through a series of events, that course design launched me into a full-time teaching position.   The problem came when none of the literature prepared me to teach disgruntled teenagers from China.   

As I have said before, my interest has always been Mexico.  I speak Spanish.  I found myself repeating that mantra internally through the rocky first, second, and third semesters I spent teaching classes comprised primarily of mainland Chinese young adults.  They resisted me at every turn, and I pushed right back.  I often said that it was like I was teaching English as Foreign Language in China, except I had skipped the “honeymoon stage” of culture shock, and skipped right to “disorientation” and “aggression.”  I was annoyed by a group of people I didn’t understand and who I felt didn’t understand me.  We had different goals and different worldviews.  This discord was only compounded in teacher workshops as we sat around “student bashing,” commiserating about our shared “problem children.”  I watched myself move from a progressive stance on language learning I had acquired in graduate school, to a more conservative, “Speak English!” approach. It wasn’t always that way, though. 

The glorious moments with the Chinese students came as I continued to teach my class on social justice with the service-learning component.  I was invigorated as I planned lessons about issues of social inequality.  In fact, I was getting an education right alongside my students, as we learned about stereotypes, racism, global warming, and urban development.  I even invited my old friends from non-profit organizations to give lectures about refugees, "White flight," and racial inequality.  They had been the ones to first teach me about the history of St. Louis in a different way than I had grown up with.  I learned how racism had left an indelible mark on the landscape and people.  My friends introduced me to authors who wrote about racial inequality, which led me to other books that I read in my free time, including Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? (Tatum, 2003)  and The Souls of Black Folks (Du Bois, 1973).  It really came home to me that I had to move in the opposite direction of history trends of White segregation, and I taught this to my students with a passion. 

Again, the practical application of this knowledge came slowly.  I remember one semester I had a very honest discussion with my students after we had reached a moment of impasse.  They were consistently failing to meet my expectations.  Many of them didn’t do the homework I assigned, they tended to not participate in class, or they didn’t show up at all.  At this point in my teaching career, I didn’t think to ask them about their perception of the class or the ESL program.  I was frustrated and I could tell they were, too. 

“Don’t you want to pass ESL and go to academic classes?” I asked in a bewildered tone. Silence. Finally, someone ventured a response.  “We don’t care about ESL.  We just care about business classes.” I retorted, “But you have to pass ESL if you want to go to business classes!”  Silence.  Again, someone bravely attempted a reply, “You are angry.  Do you hate Chinese students?”  Now I was dumbfounded.  “Of course not.  I don’t hate you. I guess I’m just frustrated because I thought Chinese students would be good students.  We have a stereotype here in the U.S. that Chinese students always work really hard, come to class every day, and get good grades.  And they are good at math.”  Now the students grinned broadly and a few chuckled.  “Well, of course we are not all good at math!” one student responded.  “We are very lazy,” another added.  “Well, I guess there are lazy people in every country,” I said.  “Right,” they agreed and smiled knowingly.  They seemed relieved that they were not the only ones who experiences discomfort as they encountered the “other,” especially if it was their teacher who was supposed to “know it all.” 

Interestingly, at this very same time we were learning in the class about the dangers of “positive” stereotypes.  Specifically, there is a view held by many Americans that Asians are the “model minority.” This is similar to belief that Asians (i.e. Chinese, Japanese, and Asian Indians) are “almost White” (Bonilla-Silva, 2003), which akin to saying they are “inferior, but better than the other people who are more inferior.” This monolithic view of Asians is just as damaging as negative stereotypes, since it reduces individuals to a caricature (Lee, 1994).  Also, the students who don’t fit the mold are treated as deviants, which is what I had unintentionally done to my students.  Further, it ignores extreme diversity within the group we label “Asian.”  My students had been born in mainland China, which is very different from being of Asian descent born in the United States.  Further, certain groups of immigrants from Asia tend to have high levels of education.  Other groups, especially refugees from Laos and Cambodia, who do not have very high levels of education and tend to have dark skin,  experience more intense levels of discrimination when they come to this country.  

My biases against speakers of other languages besides English, against Chinese people, and even against Asians were thrown into sharp relief at this time in my life. I was a trained ESL teacher, who was supposed to value all languages, but I didn't value anything I couldn't understand. For the first time in my life, I was in a situation where I could not speak the language of dominance.  Although I had been to other countries, I had been fluent in Spanish for a long time, and so I couldn’t remember a time when I didn’t know what was going on.  I thought of myself as very multicultural, but I really only liked Spanish and Mexico.  I was generally uninterested in Chinese culture, and what I did know, I evaluated on the basis of my own cultural norms and values.  I slowly learned to see my Chinese students’ culture and language as beautiful and complex. While I mostly wince in pain as I recall the damage I must have done to those poor students, I am grateful for the lessons that they taught me.  

Autobiography Pt. 4: Sociolinguistics

References

• Bonilla-Silva, E. (2003). Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in the United States. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield. 
• Du Bois, W. E. B. (1973). The souls of Black folk. Millwood, N.Y: Kraus-Thomson Organization Ltd. 
• Lee, S. J. (1994). Behind the model-minority stereotype: Voices of high- and low-achieving Asian American students. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 25, 413–429. 
• Tatum, B. D. (2003). “Why are all the Black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?”: And other conversations about race. New York, NY: Basic Books. 

Autobiography Pt. 2: Cherokee Street

I recently have been asked by a few people about how I became interested in antiracism.  In helping myself move forward, I realize that I need to look back.  Also, I hope to convey the sense that I too am on a journey; I am a work in progress.  This is part of my story.

“We’ve found the house we want to buy!” I excitedly told our real estate agent over the phone one fall day in 2009.  “It’s on Cherokee Street, and we know the people who are selling.  It’s not even on the market yet, but this is the one.”  
 

“Well, we’ll keep looking.  I have lots of houses that are coming out on the market, and I’ll keep sending them your way,” she replied.  “This is the fun part, where you really get to shop around for what you want.”

“No, really, you don’t have to send any other houses… we really want this one.”

“Well, let’s see what it appraises for.  I mean, it is on Cherokee Street.  I think we will be able to get the value down.  Are you sure you want to buy in that ZIP code?”  

Right down to the point of closing on our first house, I wasn’t sure our real estate agent was convinced we had a good hold on reality.  She still comments to my in-laws how “unique” my husband and I are, how much she admires us.  I think she means it as a compliment, but it carries with it the same dubious tone that we get from other friends and family when they question us about the safety of the neighborhood. 

 At the time my husband and I got married, we were sure we should buy a house.  We weren’t exactly sure where we wanted to live in the city, but we knew we wanted to live in the city. It wasn't just about saving money on property taxes, although that was a nice perk. We sincerely thought that the city would be the best place to live and raise children.  We wanted to live simply. We had no desire to shop around for houses, though.  It was as if we were waiting for the right house to appear.  When some of our friends on Cherokee Street told us their parents were going to sell their house, we knew it was the one. It just felt right.  I told my husband, “This is antiracism.  We are moving against ‘white flight!’”(Tatum, 2003).

My history with Cherokee Street didn’t begin as an antiracist move, however.  In fact, my first encounter with Cherokee Street began with a search for the cultural “other” and ended in a traffic ticket from a very angry cop, who yelled at me something about “clueless kids who come to the city.”  In fact, I was a clueless city driver, and had unintentionally blown through a stop sign, not suspecting that there might be one on every block.  I had come to Cherokee Street the very same day I had interviewed the director of Hispanic Ministries with Catholic Charities as part of my senior thesis on Latin American immigration to Missouri.  She had commented that it was a “little Mexico” on Cherokee Street, and so as soon as I left her office, I headed in that direction.  I was disappointed to find that there were only a few Mexican markets.  I don’t know what I expected to find, but it was admittedly smaller and less Mexican than I had hoped.  

A few years later, my best friend bought a house on Cherokee Street in order to be close to an urban ministry located on the same street.  My friend and I had worked with this ministry, which focused on meeting the practical and spiritual needs of immigrants and refugees in St. Louis City.  I actually had been assigned to a different ministry to work with right out of college.  I was supposed to do office work in an urban development company.  When I realized the job was little more than filing, however, I quickly reassigned myself to the much more interesting job of accompanying my friend to visit refugee families from Colombia.  Again, my obsession with the cultural “other” obscured the systemic societal issues about which my mentors were trying to inform me.  

I moved in with my friend on Cherokee Street about a year later, and then when she got married, I moved next door.  My friend’s father owned the four-family flat adjacent to her house, and so I enjoyed the next few years with very low rent.  I also rode the public bus to school because my roommate used my car to go to work very early in the morning.  Since I worked very close by, I was able to use public transportation easily.  I prided myself on my bravery for riding public transportation, as well as walking home at night on Cherokee Street occasionally.  It felt like being back in Mexico, where everything was an adventure.  Of course, I had the luxury of a car on the weekends, when I would go out the county for church and other activities. On top of that, I didn’t actually know anybody else in the area besides my friends next door.  One incident stands out in my mind about my lack of integration in the neighborhood.  

I noticed racial patterns riding the bus.  Going up Grand Avenue, the bus was filled with Black folks, except for me.  As we went north towards the highways, more and more White people got on.  By the time we reached the MetroLink, the crowd was fairly diverse. I felt a sense of pride that I was so culturally “diverse” in my experiences.  One day, a White man got on the bus somewhere on Grand.  He started talking to people on the bus, cracking jokes, and pretty soon the whole bus was laughing.  He mentioned he was from another city.  As he got off the bus, people were still shaking their heads and laughing. 

I turned to the young Black woman sitting beside me and said with a chuckle, “You can really tell he wasn’t from around here.  I mean, we don’t talk to each other on the bus.” She replied, “I don’t know… I mean, I talk to people on the bus…”  I suddenly knew what I meant by “we.”  I quickly interjected, “No, you’re right.  I think I don’t talk to people on the bus… now that I think about it, I don’t think White people really talk to other people on the bus.” 

In fact, White people talked to other White people on the bus, but that fact eluded me at that moment.  Whiteness was completely invisible to me, and Blackness seemed overwhelming.  What followed was a mutually interesting conversation as the young woman and I walked home in the same direction.  We even exchanged phone numbers when we found out that we were more or less neighbors.  I never called her, nor did I see the young woman again, a fact that still pains me to admit.

These select anecdotes are  evidence of my pretense that I am a White person who "gets it."  I have taken pride in my urban life, when I really hadn't done the work to enter into solidarity with my neighbors.  I am not the only one.  You can read other places about young White folks migrating back to cities, as they abandon the vestiges of what they consider to be the empty, segregated and unsustainable suburban lifestyles of their parents.  However, the results in the city are not that much more integrated or fulfilling unless White folks make an effort to break out of their White social circles. I have to constantly reevaluate myself and the lifestyle I lead, who I hang out with, and where I want to end up.  This is my journey.  I may be off to a good start, but unless I'm intentional, I may end up standing still, or worse--going backwards. 

Autobiography Pt. 3: English as a Second Language



References

Tatum, B. D. (2003). “Why are all the Black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?”: And other conversations about race. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Autobiography Pt. 1: Mexico

I recently have been asked by a few people about how I became interested in antiracism.  In helping myself move forward, I realize that I need to look back.  Also, I hope to convey the sense that I too am on a journey; I am a work in progress.  This is part of my story.

When I was a little girl, I wanted to be Mexican.  Actually, I wanted to be Mexican until I was in my twenties.  During college, my obsession with speaking Spanish and immersing myself in “culture” reached its pinnacle, and I traveled to Mexico as often as I could.  I arranged to study abroad during college in Guadalajara, Mexico, and then later returned for a month on sabbatical.  I spent two summers traveling with different groups to Tijuana, Mexico as an interpreter on mission trips, and then returned for a few weeks on another sabbatical.  Eventually, I worked for a summer with a government agency (that will remained nameless) as a translator.  Basically, I translated and transcribed wire-tapped phone calls.  It was this same summer that I got into a relationship with a Mexican guy that revealed once and for all the absurdity of my obsession with the “other." I didn't actually like him for what he had to offer as a person, but for his language and ethnicity.  It was over the weeks of ending this relationship, accompanied by random nightmares from wire-tapped phone calls in Spanish, that my illusion of a mythical Mexico slowly faded and died.  

The obvious explanation for my interest in Mexico and the Spanish language comes from my parents, who hold glorious memories of the years we lived in California, where there were “lots of Hispanics,” and a few wealthy Portuguese dairy farmers.  Not that we knew many Hispanics or Portuguese dairy farmers personally, but the legend grew stronger in the years we lived in exile back in Illinois.  The years in California were better times for my parents.  They represented a strong community, mission trips to Mexico, church planting, and warm weather. It would seem natural that I would be interested in Spanish and Mexican culture. 

The strange part is, many people in California would prefer that all the Mexicans would just go back to Mexico.  Why did my parents hold this fascination, when in fact, we had mostly White friends, not Hispanic?  Is it possible that my parents were young expats of Missouri who wanted to break ties with their family and a perceived lack of culture they grew up with?  In any case, they passed down this perception to me, and I carried the desire with me into my young adult years to break with what I perceived to be a “non-culture” and find a robust cultural identity.

In fact, the effects of racism on White people include a sense of being “normal,” not ethnic or racialized.  In an attempt to assimilate and accrue the benefits of Whiteness, many light skinned immigrants had to shed the remnants of their foods, language and traditions.  This has left many White people divorced from their ethnic roots. This can create an anxiety in some White folks to find culturally roots anywhere they can, whether by hanging out with Black people, learning to speak Spanish, or eating at "ethnic" restaurants.  “Whiteness” is held as the norm, while other racial groups are seen as having “culture” (Frankenberg, 1993). The reality is that White people do have culture, it's just almost invisible because it's positioned as the dominant and privileged culture.

The positive side of my obsession with Spanish is that I did become fluent in a second language.  I was able to experience what it feels like to stumble over words and concepts in another language, exhaust my mental resources in one hour of conversation, navigate through cultural misinterpretations and experience the stages of culture shock.  I became aware that certain groups of people in my own country, namely immigrants and refugees, were pushed to the margins of society.  In my studies, I learned about cultural pluralism, economic and social inequality, and the hegemonic powers of colonialism and imperialism.  I learned there were different ways of viewing and understanding world events than from the "official" perspective of the United States' government. 

All this knowledge took a long time to seep into my understanding of the context in St. Louis, Missouri, though.  I still had tunnel vision for the glorified cultural “otherness” of immigrants and refugees.  I sought out situations to help refugee families, although I didn't establish real relationships with them.  I viewed immigrants and refugees, Hispanics particularly, as culturally, but not racially “other” (Bonilla-Silva, 2003). This is still a form of racism.  It is kind of like saying, "Hispanics are different, but not as different as Black people."  And during this time, I still held many anti-Black biases.  I believed that Black people were at least culturally different from me enough to inhibit any kind of intimate friendship.  I had in me the seeds of something that would grow into my work now, but I had a long way to go.

Autobiography Pt. 2: Cherokee Street.

References

• Bonilla-Silva, E. (2003). Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in the United States. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield.
• Frankenberg, R. (1993). White women, race matters: The social construction of whiteness. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

The Collateral Damage of Racism

My heart is so heavy today as I write.  I have debated whether or not to write this because I know that to some, it might come off as insensitive, which is not my intent.  This disclaimer is to say that I am crying about the babies and adults that were killed yesterday.  They didn't deserve it.  It was not God's will or judgement on America, as some theologians have already put forward.  It was evil.  Pure evil.

Having said all that, I think that there is an elephant in the room when it comes to these kinds of tragedies, and we need to talk about it.  Because I believe what happened yesterday was a consequence of racism in our nation. Allow me to explain what I mean.

I listened to the news on NPR yesterday as soon as I saw the headline on social media.  I scoured the articles on the Internet.  I watched the news on television, which I don't normally do.  I wanted to know, like many people, how and why such a thing could happen.  I wanted to make sense of it.  The host of the radio program was asking a psychologist if there was a psychological profile for these types of criminals who perpetrate these mass murders.  The psychologist said that there was, but the tricky thing is that not all people who fit that description end up committing this type of crime.  And most of the time, people don't realize the "red flags" until after the fact.  As the conversation continued, I was listening for one other piece of information: the racial identity of the shooter.

I have started to listen for "race" in the news, when it shows up in discourse and when it doesn't.  For example, on the nightly news in St. Louis, I don't normally hear direct references to racial identifications, but there are certain "code words" that the newscasters use to let you know who they are talking about (e.g. neighborhood, street names, physical descriptions, names).  Like most people, I have become accustomed to processing the news in racialized ways.  In the case of the tragedy in Aurora, Colorado, I listened and listened.  Not one time did I hear the perpetrator described in racialized terms.  I remember thinking, "They haven't said--I bet he was White."  And so again yesterday, I listened and listened, but never heard once anything to indicate that 1) the perpetrator was White or 2) that the town affected was predominantly White.  So when the radio program host kept pushing the psychologist for a "profile" of "these types" of mass killers, I wanted to shout, "White males! Look for White males!" as if they could hear me and start the hunt right away. 

Now hear me when I say, I am not hating on White males.  I have many White men in my life, including a wonderful husband, sons, and brothers.  What I am saying is that statistically, the majority of mass murderers, serial killers and sex offenders are White men.  Are all White men criminals?  Of course not.  But when you go to check my facts (and I hope you do), it should become clear that there is a racial profile for "these types" of criminals.  In a country where Black and Brown men, along with anyone who looks like they might be from the Middle East, are consistently racially profiled, it is indicative that the very profile we should be on the look-out for is the one we never admit or say out loud: White men.  

The collateral damage of racism plays out like this:

White folks have been socialized to fear Black men.  White towns have fought long and hard to keep Black and Brown folks out (search the term "sundown towns" for more info).  The result is that many small towns and municipalities are currently all White, while people of color are primarily forced into urban areas.  And in these White spaces, there is a sense of security because the "undesirables," the people to be feared, have been kept out.  On the other hand, if you talk about living in an urban area, you will hear White folks talk more about issues of safety.

The governor of Connecticut attempted to give words of comfort to the town of Newtown yesterday.  He said that this was not preventable.  He said, "Today, evil had visited this town."  My reply: Evil was already living in your town.  He lived in a house in your town and had access to guns. Lots of guns.

Initially, I wanted to avoid the issue of gun control, because I thought it was a side issue, although related.  I leaned more towards increased school security, which I still advocate.  But we can't address one without the other, addressing the symptom without first analyzing the disease.

You might think me a conspiracy theorist at this point, but the whole issue of "right to carry" is also deeply connected to a racist system.  First, it is and has always been easier for White people to obtain gun permits than it is for people of color. Throughout most of our history, it was illegal for Black and Brown people to own guns, except during wartime.  Even when it was legal, Black people were seriously prohibited from owning firearms.  Secondly, much of our current White "gun culture" has to do with White militias that were historically allowed to form in order to either hunt Black slaves or just parade around in order to keep the Black population "subdued."  So the argument for the "right to carry" has everything to do with White privilege and the right to form a militia. 

That's why I'm saying this is a consequence of not talking about the effects of racism on White people.  We can notice trends of who these criminals are--White males--and what kinds weapons they use--primarily obtained legally--but we don't.

And while the victims of these crimes are diverse, when the shootings happen in schools, we can notice that they primarily happen at White schools.  But we don't.  

And by "we" I mean us White folk.  Because if a whole town feels secure because "it's just us White people," and everybody owns guns legally, then there is no heightened sense of awareness of possible predators. 

I have been told that there is running line within the Black community that goes something like this: "When our kids bring a gun to school, they might kill somebody on accident.  When a White kid bring guns to school, he kills everybody on purpose."  I don't think this is said with a disregard for the lives of White children, but it does point to a skewed view of reality that White folks would fear a Black man more than a White man.  And it highlights the fact that Black folks have always feared White men for very substantiated reasons. 

Let me say again that this news is devastating.  Heartbreaking.  I hugged my White babies a little closer to me last night and prayed for comfort for the town in Connecticut. I can't read the news updates without crying. But I was also angry.  Angry that people would say that this is an "isolated" event, that schools are safe places, and that there was nothing that could have been done to prevent it.  As a parent, I am not swallowing those answers.   

Because if something happens to my child, I want to know how it could have been prevented.  

Mass killings are not isolated events--they happen frequently.  The psychologist on NPR (and other sources) reported that mass killings have not increased in recent years.  The number of deaths has remained steady, but certain events have been more high profile because of the number of victims and the public nature of the crime scenes (e.g. movie theater, school).

Schools are not safe places--not in Black neighborhoods, not in White neighborhoods, not in integrated neighborhoods--unless we make them safe.  In many urban neighborhoods, there are metal detectors installed at the front door with a taser-carrying security guard looking on. Police officers routinely patrol the area around the school.  In some ways, this could be part of the impact of the stereotyping of Black and Brown youth.  However, in hearing from Black administrators and teachers in the wake of this recent tragedy, I think the security measures are largely in place because Black communities, unlike the governor of Connecticut, are not surprised about evil.  They know that there are people who would try to hurt them and their children.  They don't live with a false sense of security because they have never been afforded that luxury. 

Finally, this type of tragedy must be preventable.  To start, I believe White folks need to have the tough conversation about the false sense of security and entitlement that we feel in our White communities. We need to talk about gun control and question why White folks feel entitled to carry a concealed automatic weapon.

If we continue to ignore the elephant in the room, ignore the collateral damage of racism, these types of incidents will continue to happen.  But for today, I agree with the prayer that the President prayed, that God would heal the brokenhearted and bind up their wounds. 

Race wrestling and race talk dilemmas

I feel that I have come full circle in my readings this summer.  I started in schools, and now am ending in schools.  At the beginning of the summer, I found myself shocked and amazed at a new understanding of “race,” how racial difference is socially reproduced in schools, and the fact that racist attitudes and behavior still “happen” in our society. 

At this point, I am less shocked.  As I read Colormute by Mica Pollock (2004), I could see patterns already at the beginning of her story.  She painstakingly laid out the details of a multi-year qualitative study of a multi-racial high school in California.  For me, it seemed too slow.  As I had already immersed myself in theories about racialization and racial stratification, I wanted to point out the “problems” immediately and seek to redress them.

I see great wisdom in the careful, longitudinal approach.  Already someone close to me had warned that people like me go “to graduate level classes where you learn racism or learn hate of people labeled racists” and eventually, “after having become sensitized by reading all this material that you will see racism under every tree, bush, rock…”  This accusation haunted me throughout the summer reading course, and apparently still has a sting.  

 I did start seeing racism, seemingly everywhere.  Each social interaction and news story took on new meanings and dimensions.  My whole framework for understanding “race” and racial difference had been replaced.  I learned new nuanced definitions for racism, as it manifests in both blatant and covert everyday attitudes and actions.  And sadly, I did react harshly with white folks I felt didn’t “get it,” as I unintentionally initiated conversations that confirmed the worst of what they already thought of me. 

The brilliance of Pollock (2004), as with so many other scholars I have read over the summer, is that she goes to great lengths to give a thorough account of what happened on a daily basis at “Columbus High School.”  She is a white woman who taught one year at this racially diverse school, so as she began to collect data about how students, faculty and staff talked (or didn’t talk) about “race,” she was also in process of working with all the stakeholders.  Therefore, she goes out of her way not to paint participants as “racist” people, but simply as they appeared in the drama of the school.  She also includes her own contributions, missteps, and omissions to the racial dialogue of the school, which essentially incriminates her along with anyone else who might be “blamed” in her unfolding story.  Essentially, she does uncover racism, although she rarely names it as such.  

One might argue that is precisely because she was looking for discussions that included or omitted racial terms.  However, she has a few strange twists and turns in her study going for her.  The first is that she initially started out with the question of how “race” affected the way that students “got along” with each other.  As she began to collect data, she began to notice a predictable pattern of how people in the school did and did not talk about “race.”  She then changed her research question to examine when “race” did and did not appear in conversations. Secondly, half-way through her study the school was “reconstituted,” meaning that all the faculty and staff were replaced with new people in an effort to improve school outcomes.  She was able to continue her study with the same students, but all new adult participants.  During this time, she noticed the same patterns in the way that the adults talked or didn’t talk about “race” in the school, and this from a group of complete strangers! 

The general conclusion of Pollock’s study was that the adults at Columbus shared in a “colormute” discourse.  In other words, while they did talk about “race” in matter-of-fact ways in some instances, discussion of “race” and racial groups remained absent from faculty meetings and public communications.  Predictably, adults spoke of racial groups for multicultural events (e.g. “The Samoans are going to do their traditional dance”) or in instances of violence in the school (e.g. “The Filipinos were fighting the blacks”).  Adults also commented in private conversations about “race,” such as the on-going debate about what do about the black students in the hallway and whether it was really only black students.  But these private conversations never surfaced during meetings or discussions with students, and so in the case of the students in the hallway, nothing was actually done about the situation that so many faculty and students noticed.  

Likewise, while patterns student achievement could be analyzed in terms of racial groups, this was never explicitly done.  There was discussion from the predominantly white faculty of how to help all students, who were mostly “low-income minorities,” there were no explicit attempts to examine which racial groups in the school fared worse.  These statistics showed that blacks and Latinos were disproportionately disciplined, had lower achievement rates, and were more likely to drop out and not graduate than other groups.  In fact, the Consent Decree that outlined the desegregation policy for the district contained language that focused on black and Latino students, and the focus of the reconstitution echoed this concern.  However, this focus was never directly communicated to faculty before or after the reconstitution.  And although certain faculty and administrators were aware of the language in the Consent Decree, the discussion of how to meet the reconstitution goals never took place in a public forum.

Pollock concludes with some observations about the difficulties in talking about “race” and racial inequality:

• We don’t belong to simple race groups, but we do. (i.e. Individual identity is complex; however, students still identified with racial groups at different times, and faculty regularly categorized students into simplistic racial groups.)  
• Race doesn’t matter, but it does.  (i.e. “Race” is a social construction, not a biological reality; however, social interactions in schools create racial difference and inequality.)
• The “de-raced” words we use when discussing plans for racial equality can actually keep ups from discussing ways to make opportunities more racially equal.
• The more complex inequality seems to get, the more simplistic inequality analysis seems to become. (i.e. Even though Columbus was racially and economically diverse, the students seemed to get lumped in to one category, that of “low-income minority.”)
• The questions we ask most about race are the very questions we most suppress.
• Although talking racial terms can make race matter, not talking in racial terms can make race matter, too. 

Buehler (in press), in a similar study, found similar discourse patterns in a high school in Michigan.  She, like Pollock, suggests that talking about “race” in strategic ways can actually help to remedy racial inequality in schools.  Buehler begins with the premise that faculty and students are already engaged in “race wrestling,” that is, an internal struggle about how “race” should matter faced with how it does matter.  She recommends thoughtful discussion about “race talk” within individual schools.  These initial discussions should shed light on the ways racial difference and inequalities are being socially reproduced in that particular institution, and hopefully inform antiracist strategies.  Talking honestly and judiciously about “race” is, perhaps ironically, the first step towards moving beyond “just talk” and into anti-racist action.   

References

Buehler, J. (in press). “There’s a problem, and we’ve got to face it”: How staff members wrestled with race in an urban high school. Race, Ethnicity & Education.

Pollock, M. (2004). Colormute: Race talk dilemmas in an American school. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press.